19 August

Nb. I would strongly urge any visitors to this page NOT to purchase this record directly from No Quarter; I placed an order through their website and never received my copy in the mail. When I tried following up with Mike from No Quarter, I never heard back. Total drag.

Born out of the ashes of the most-excellent Laddio Bolocko, Psychic Paramount largely abandon the jazz-punk stylings of the former, instead opting for a noisy, gritty form of (post-)prog. While not as daring or demanding as Laddio Bolocko, there are nevertheless, exciting moments throughout their debut album. The atmospheric bombast of the relatively calm two minute opener “Megatherion” quickly gives way to the searing “Para5” where guitarist Drew St. Ivany oscillates between slide playing and some Ron Asheton meets John McLaughlin riffing. The whole album is heavily overdriven and reminiscent of Cherubs Heroin Man LP, with the music crumbling out of the speakers. The results are dirty and mix well with the strangely percussive overtones throughout. Rounding out the record is the ten minute closer, “Gamelan.” After seven and a half minutes of cascading, delay-heavy guitar looping that creates a schizophrenic and nearly unbearable tension, the band almost seamlessly loose themselves in a groove, before the track cuts out to a distant recording of the group playing something else altogether — delaying gratification and a resulting in an anticlimactic denouement. The record is by no means disappointing, but does feel a bit underwhelming. On that note, their Franco-Italian Tour release by Baltimore’s Public Guilt delivers where this studio album falls flat.